Russia Annexes Parts of Eastern Ukraine: What We Need to Know
Russia still does not fully control any of the four regions. Zelensky vowed in August 2022 to not hold any peace talks if the Kremlin proceeded with the referendums in the occupied areas.
Demographics in Eastern Ukraine Have Shifted During the War
Most Ukrainians who live in the Donbas region speak Russian. But before the full-scale war in 2022, many of these people still preferred to identify as having mixed Ukrainian and Russian identities – or, otherwise, as a person from the Donbas or a Ukrainian citizen.
The Donbas region was home to about 6.5 million people before the 2022 invasion, out of a total 43 million in Ukraine.
The region was once known for its industrial output and coal mines, some of which Russia has seized control of during the war.
Today, all four of the occupied regions are active war zones that many residents have fled. According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, over 11 million Ukrainians have left the country since February 2022.
There are also up to 7 million Ukrainians who have been uprooted from their homes but still live in Ukraine, making them internally displaced. More than 60 percent of the internally displaced Ukrainians are from the eastern regions.
As a result, the Russian referendum votes were conducted without accounting for the opinion of half – or even the majority – of the population in these territories.
Most Ukrainians in the Occupied Territories Don’t Want to Be Part of Russia
In 2014, when Luhansk and Donetsk first proclaimed their independence, the majority of the people there said they preferred to be part of their own republic, rather than becoming a part of Russia. Approximately 52 percent of people in these regions at the time said they were against joining Russia, while 28 percent in Donetsk and 30 percent in Luhansk supported it, according to the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, a private research group in Ukraine that conducts sociological and marketing research.
At the same time, both Kherson and Zaporizhzhia were overwhelmingly against joining Russia. Approximately 85 percent of people in Kherson and 82 percent in Zaporizhzhia said they wanted to remain separate, according to the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology.
After eight years of fighting, which has led to destruction of houses and infrastructure, as well as thousands of civilian deaths in eastern Ukraine, the number of Russian sympathizers in the Donbas decreased.
The Kyiv International Institute of Sociology reported that in late 2021 and early 2022, less than 22 percent of people in the Donbas region and less than 12 percent in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia wanted to become part of Russia.
Over 52 percent of Donbas residents, meanwhile, said in separate surveys conducted by American polling experts in early 2022 that they were apathetic about where to live, whether in Russia or in Ukraine. What most people cared about was their financial stability and family’s overall well-being.
Since the 2022 invasion, 92 percent of polled residents in the Donbas said that there should be no territorial concessions for the earliest possible end of the war, according to the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology.
These figures contradict Putin’s justification to launch the so-called “special military operation” to defend a Russian-speaking population that Ukraine is allegedly persecuting.
Tatsiana Kulakevich is Assistant Professor of Instruction at School of Interdisciplinary Global Studies, Affiliate Professor at the Institute on Russia, University of South Florida. This article is published courtesy of The Conversation.
